- cross-posted to:
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- cross-posted to:
- [email protected]
Oh my gody guys and girls. I am beyond hyped right now, two days into riding the Pyrenees west to east.
I started my pyrenees route yesterday from St. Jean de Luz on the atlantic coast. I thought road cycling was popular in spain, but here in this french town - and i’m trying to be accurate here - i saw about a hundred roadies riding out into the mountains this morning. Crazy.
It is a beautiful sunny saturday, i feel like it’s the first really warm day while i am cycling on this trip, it’s 25° - which was basically the temperature i expected all along. The route for the day would take me over two smaller passes, but starting from sea level it’s still a lot to climb. First pass is the Puerto de Oxtondo, it’s not very spectacular and has some traffic, totally forgot about motorbikers. On the way to the pass i cross into spain, the downhill is sweet and at some point i turn east to climb up the Izpegiko or Col d’Ispeguy, a border pass after which i’ll be back on the french side of the basque country. That one is much nicer, hardly any traffic. A guy touring with a cargo bike comes zipping down as i climb up, waving happily. On top of the pass is a bar, i have a drink, then sit on the grass to eat a banana and some cookies and enjoy the view. There’s horses around and one cute baby horse comes up to me, i pet it a bit and it keeps demanding more. It starts to nibble on my tshirt. I try to hush it away, it’s been hanging around for a while. Then it starts to nibble on my forkbag. Eventually it lets go of my stuff and licks the cylinders of a motorbike. Horses i guess.
About to descend the Izpegiko
Downhill is gorgeous and i roll into St Jean Pied de Port, a major starting town for the camino crowd. I check in on the municipal campsite, whole bunch of cycle tourers there (hikers too), i assume most of them are doing the camino too. I go into town to eat at a bar and befriend an american guy, we decide to share a table, he was also waiting for a free table. He is going to start walking the camino the next day.
Back in my tent i plan my route for the next day, as i have already went off the track i had originally planned.
I start right in time to when the carrefour supermarket opens, i buy food for 2 and a half days because it seems like i won’t pass anything really. Turns out i just had the food type poi’s disabled in my navigation app.
It is going to be 17° and cloudy today, but the wind isn’t cold so it feels kinda good. I’ll be heading into the Irati forest. As i’m riding towards my first climb there’s a sign that says col d’iraty 17 km at 5.7 %. That sounds alright. My plan is to ride only about two thirds of it, then go onto what looks like a hiking track, then do a little river crossing onto a mountainbike route. A sign comes up 17.5 km to the col, next 500m will average 11%. I guess that’ll only make the rest a bit milder. But it turns out the whole climb isn’t very even and i started a climb that will average almost 10% for the next 9km. If i had had a look at the grades yesterday evening, i’m sure i’d have found a different route. The climb is really moody and cloudy, but i still enjoy it, there’s a whole lot of vultures dipping in and out of the clouds, which looks amazing, very calm climb too, just a few roadies and a couple RVs.
Climbing up the Burdinkurutxetako
The climb has some kind of pre-pass, it goes by the snappy name “Burdinkurutxetako”, it is basically where the steep section ends and i will turn onto the hiking track. It is super beautiful forest, i ride along the creek. There comes a section that looked like hike-a-bike, but i am able to “ride” down, walking speed and one foot on the ground kinda. Then i am at the river crossing. I gues this is the first actual river crossing i did. Water is above knee high in parts. There are diagonal rocky furrows in parts that look super sketchy, all the rocks are covored with algae too. I find a spot with hardly any furrows, do a test walk to the other side. It’s pretty damn slippery and the current kinda strong. I decide to carry over bags and bike seperately. I bring two bags at once, i think having one hand free could be helpful. Last i bring over the bike, which is way easier.
About to cross. There is a big toad hidden in this picture, i guess it’s really hard to find, whoever finds it will get an upvote
I don’t know if the it was the right call to cross the river 7 times (incl. test walk) or if i should have just gone with the complete bike. Maybe the current would have been worse with the bags, but it felt really stable with the bike as an extra post. While i’m fooling around with my crap by the river, the sun comes out. On the other side of the river is a picnic table and i eat some waffles and try to let my sandals dry. River crossing was also a border crossing, i am back on the spanish side now.
Then i get onto the mtb track, which is really a gravel road. It gets cloudy again, and i ride a climb way into the clouds, then a real fun downhill out of the clouds, then climb back into the clouds again. On top of the climb is a hikers bar, open on the weekend. I drink a coke on the terrasse, which should have a fantastic view but it’s all in the clouds. The plan is to go like some 20km more, but fiddling around with my phone i see that there’s a refugio just 2km further up a road. It is a bit early, but the sun breaks through the clouds again, i can see into the mountains and think that would be real sweet. The clouds move real fast, i get a view for 20 seconds and then it’s all just fog again. And then a view again. I order two beers at the bar, one of them to go, some crisps and another bottle of water. The bar closes at 6, i ride up up to the refugio and get a glimpse of really great views and i start to get super fucking high on my trip. Cycle touring is the best.
The refugio is again a bit shoddy, but i place a chair outside of it, sheltered from the wind and eat some crisps, drink the other beer, watch birds of preyg, enjoy the view and start writing a post for lemmy.
Chilling at the refugio
At 8 o’clock i am covered in clouds, the wind picks up and it gets cold, but in the refugio it’s warm, someone has made a fire here today, the warmth comes from the fireplace. I cook some pasta, then some tea, have a look outside but it’s still all clouds.
I am sending this the day after, there was no connection in the refugio. Morning was still all clouds, but i descended out of them already. On the descend i remembered what i wanted to buy last week at Decathlon in Pamplona: Gloves.
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Bonus horse
So i rode out of the clouds from the refugio, it had rained in the morning and it was feeling quite cold again. The ride was beautiful though, through beautiful basque villages. I had breakfast in Izaba. Then i went back on the mountain bike track and there i got a few hundred meters of hike-a-bike through a beautiful, wet and mossy forest.
This was actually real steep but the photo effect does its job
On top of the hiking section i rode over a swampy field that led onto a swampy track fenced off on both sides with barbed wire. There were sections with long and deep muddy puddles across the whole track and i tried my best to walk on the grassy, fenced off sides and push my bike through the mud. On the last two meters i still stepped into the mud puddle, which in my imagination consisted of 70% cow shit and 30% horse shit. The track ended on an asphalt road where i sat down to clean my feet and sandals.
Then i went onto the climb along the asphalt road. Two bikepackers rolled down the other way, giving me smiles and thumbs up. I was wondering if it was just a greeting or if it was a sign that it’s going to be super nice up there. In hindsight i think it was the latter. When i reached the pass the clouds went away and the sun came out. There were signs that said i was leaving Navarra and the basque country, and entering Aragón and the Parque natural de los valles occidentales.
Descending along the Rio Veral
The descend was amazing and the landscape had changed quite a bit from the wet greens of the basque country to a lot more dry and rocky. It went along the Rio Veral to the fantastic village Ansó, which also looked completely different to the basque villages earlier that day. Then i went climbing another hill to the village Hecho and on the pass i found a refugio. The problem was i had hardly any water left. The refugio was super nice, very clean. Nice table, fireplace with stuff to build a fire. And it was still quite early. I didn’t want to descend to get water and then go back up. Some hikers came up to the spot, i asked them if they had seen some kind of water source, but they hadn’t. This is not the basque country anymore where water seems to come out of every crack. I hung out there for a bit in the hope that some RV or motorbiker would find its way up there to bum water off, but no luck. Eventually i rode down to Hecho, where i ran into a dutch guy on his tour. He stayed at the villages campsite. So i went shopping and also went there to sleep.
Today then it was all sunny and warm, amazing. Next days looking great too. Easy riding with hardly any climbs. In a village before the one little climb i meet the dutch tourer from the campsite, we drink coffee and chat then keep going. Couple hours later in the nice town Jaca, i have lunch and the dutch guy shows up again, he also gets lunch and we chat for a good while. He stays in Jaca today, i want to continue to Biescas. I want to ride the popular cols on the french side hopefully before the weekend, when all the motorbikers will show up.
Riding towards Biescas
On the way to Biescas the view on the big mountains gets me all excited about how it will continue from tomorrow on.
Btw, i keep writing down all these province, village and river names not because i am a formidable expert on the region, but so that it becomes a bit more structured in my own brain instead of one big mush of random villages and rivers.
After breakfast in Biescas i head towards the Portalet pass. It’s a transit pass and has some traffic, but also has spanish drivers and a shoulder. There is a nice bridge to the side of the road and i go have a look. There’s a couple taking photos, i ask them if i should take one of them both together but they’re good. We chat a bit and will meet each other some more times on the way up (they are by car but get out and look around where it’s nice). The ride is real nice although the best views are probably to be seen behind me. There is a nice car free tunnel circumnavigation and at the second reservoir i get off the main road and ride on the other side of the lake into Sallent de Gállego, the village where one of the hikers i had met in Riglos a couple weeks ago grew up in. I send her a digital postcard, i am actually riding this route now because of what she was telling me. She tells me to visit her cousine’s shop at the pass. After Sallent de Gállego i follow the old road to Formigal, away from the traffic but eventually end up on the main road again for the last km.
Riding out of Sallent de Gállego on the old road to Formigal
The cousine’s shop is closed and the pass does not have great panoramas, it is surrounded by mountains. Bit of a disappointment, i thought i’d be drinking a fanta with a view up there. I still hang around a bit, and then descend the 30 km down to Laruns in France. Downhill has really strong headwinds but is nice, especially the lower bit. In Laruns i have a beer, crepes and coffee, next morning i will start climbing the col d’aubisque from here. It looks already amazing from down in here, looking up towards aubisque. Beautiful mountain views from Laruns.
But the next morning is cloudy and moody. Looks great but would be nice to have view when i do the effort and climb up there, looks like a tough climb too. Weather should clear up after noon according to my app, but the campsite host says sun will only come out tomorrow. Pretty nice guy for being such a negative nancy.
Looking towards the Aubisque from Laruns in the morning. Day before you would see the big mountains of the Aubisque in the background. The pass will be a good km higher up than were the clouds start hanging.
At the start of the climb was a sign that said the road would be closed after the col du soulor, which is a mini pass after the aubisque. It will be fine. I climb into the clouds, strangely there is no traffic whatsoever. Maybe because the weather, or is it the closed road? I ride the whole thing with a t-shirt only, but once i stop riding at the pass i get really cold real quick. I go to the col café, which has an awesome dog, Jean.
Jean, the col cafe dog
I have a coffee and omelette, and a group of french bikepackers show up, they came from the other direction. They didn’t even try the closed road but went on a deviation that added some more climbing. Hmm. I kill some time with the dog in hopes for the weather to clear up, but at some point i just have to go. It’s raining now too.
So i start descending, actually get a glimpse of a view through the clouds and about 300m down i am below them. There comes a breathtaking cliff section with a balcony road. I took a photo but it translates so badly that i rather not post it. After col du soulor i ride towards the closed road and it’s easy peasy to pass with a bike, just a small construction site. On the way down is also no traffic to speak of, there was a tractor at soulor. After soulor the weather gets better and better and i ride onto a small gravel track where i can dry all my jackets. Gravel track turns to asphalt again and is a nice ride to Luz saint sauveur, starting point for the tourmalet.
On the small road towards Luz-Saint-Sauveur
Nice campsite, good pizza in town, with the lovely pizzeria dog Yoda.
Next morning i head for the supermarket, on the way i see Yoda and greet him and his Madame. Bakery visit, then sit down in a cafe. It’s sunny and warm, i drink my cafe con leche, feed sparrows with biscuit crumbles, just enjoying the moment. Then i remember that i actually wanted to ride up the tourmalet. Oh well.
Climb is nice with great views. There is a section i have read about before, the “Voie Fignon” after the village Barèges, which is motor traffic free, the old road. It makes the climb a bit steeper and shorter. All in all a pretty steep climb though with 7.8% over 18km. I try to not miss the old road because my routing app would have kept me on the main road (which doesn’t have bad traffic though tbh, lots of roadies obviously).
Riding the Voie Fignon towards the Pass
To my surprise nobody else takes this road, i am alone with a couple marmots. I end up on the main road again for the last km’s and the last one is real mean, steep and with headwinds on parts of the serpentine. But i’m up, yay. I hang around the pass for a bit but it geta cold and real windy. Clouds coming over from yhe other side so i ride down. Through an atrocious looking ski resort. The descend is fast, it has only a few sharp corners in the beginning. I am a very cautious downhiller, but i imagine how for people who like to haul ass, this must be one of the best ones.
I wanted to go in a cafe at the end but it’s closed, so just eating some cookies and a banana before heading to the last climb, the Col d’Aspin. The road to the col is also closed, amazing. I ride up it and a roadie overtakes me. The weather is all cold, cloudy, since i started descending tourmalet. Not much views on the climb but it looks like the sun may be out after the pass. View to the other side of the pass is much nicer today.
On the Col d’Aspin*
The descend is gorgeous, weather looks better, narrow road, no traffic. Onto the municipal campsite at the end of the descend and i’m done with cycling. Actually i got to cycle to the supermarket but really feeling my legs now. As i come back two other cycle tourers arrived, italians from south tirol going east to west through the pyrenees. They want to do Aspin and Tourmalet tomorrow. I think i will do one pass tomorrow and no more, but who knows.
I wake up to rain, but it stops and i get to start with a dry tent. Will be the last pass of the popular pass chain, the col de peyresourde. I sit down in a cafe for breakfast and then buy a map of pyrenees midi. I was envious of the south tirolians map. I really like having a map, i had been thinking of buying a pyrenees map before, but it would have been three maps to cover it all so i didn’t.
The climb is calm, even though it’s the weekend, but there are some motor bike gangs, they all are coming towards me though, they obviously start their pass chain from here. The pass has a sweet col cafe. 12 crêpes for 7€, haha. Deal. Also two sweet dogs up here, client dogs.
Descend of the col de Peyresourde
A super nice downhill, there’s paragliders around. I roll into Bagnères-de-Luchon, nice little town. I sit down at a cafe by the market square. It starts raining again. My app says it’s gonna rain all day. I chat with a guy about the weather, the best pizzeria in town and other important topics. Really liking the vibe of the people here, very relaxed on this saturday. I check in on “camping des thermes”, 8€, usb charging station, super nice hostesse. And as i have set up my tent i make friends with one of the campsites cats. That was so amazing. I just hang out and get to sleep late.
As i leave i see the cat again and manage to take a photo with the obligatory bike included
I sleep long and levae the campsite around eleven, head back to the market place cafe and then start heading over to spain again via the col du portillon. Pretty steep, i did not expect that, but it’s short and calm for a sunday. Not much view on the climb, mostly in trees, but on the downhill are some nice panoramas. In Bossòst i eat sone tortilla and think abou my options. Weather app says drizzle all day, but it’s not drizzeling, just cloudy. I was feeling lazy today, but i wonder if i should still make another big climb to over 2000m, there’d be a refugio there which looks located really good.
I ride the main road towards Arrós, go into a hotel restaurant to buy some water and drink a coke. I chat with the receptionist about the weather, it looks like it’s not going too bad and the clouds seem hanging quite high. So i will do the climb. I walk through the lobby super cool with my shades on and run into a glass door as i try to exit, haha. My glasses pinch my nose and i’m bleeding. The receptionist gives me some ice and paper, all worried about my wellbeing. I sit on the terrasse of the hotel until the bleeding stops, which takes annoyingly long. On the way out i take extra care to not run into the door again.
Right from the hotel the climb starts. Small asphalt road but it gets really steep. I really need to start checking the grades more. Although all the steep climbs were really worth it too. At some point i turn onto smooth gravel and then turn onto a chunky gravel road that should take me up to the refugio. I get those lonely vibes again, there’s nobody around. I get all calm and just look into the moody mountains as i keep climbing up.
Riding up all calm
At some point i make it to the peek of the climb, there is even a small patch of snow that i ride throu, it has narrow snow free tracks that i can pass though. There is some sun coming through a bit on the other side, looks amazing. On the descend i pass a bunch of horses standing criss cross ob the road. They freak me out, just standing there all static. But they don’t attempt to kick me, phew. Bit further down i get blown away by the views and it is just a km away from the refugio.
Views that compensate all the climbing
I see the refugio and get super excited, this is the jackpot. I ride a single track with loads of horse and cow shit to the refugio, but it is locked. Fuck. I look around the hills for a nice camp spot but it’s just cow shit and mud really. I look on the map and see that there’s another refugio about 10km away. It has a description on osm, so surely that one would work. But it adds another good climb, i’ll descend and then go back up to almost 1900m. Fuck it, let’s do it.
Climb is chunky gravel and really tough. On the last bit i would be led onto the main road but i decide to just push my bike the last km up some single track instead. I am done with cycling for the day. It’s already getting dark and cloud dust sets in.
Refugio in the evening. I’m done.
Refugio feels cold and shoddy, it has a bunk bed without mattresses but i rather sleep on the floor. I turn my phone camera in selfie mode, my nose looks terrible but it’s just blood smear from wearing sunglasses. Just a tiny cut. I’m cooking some pasta and a sound freaks me out, either a bat or a bird must be living in this refugio. Wing flapping sounds. I later see that it’s a bird, does a whole lot of flapping in the chimney, i guess it’s also freaked out. I like having the bird around better than bats. I thankfully can sleep without interruption, hope the bird as well.
In the morning the refugio seems a lot more friendly and appealing, sun comes through the window. As i am snoozing the bird starts flying around inside the refugio. I don’t know why it won’t leave through the chimney, that must be what it always does since the door was closed. Maybe my bike is in the way or it’s too scared to come close to me. I get up and open the door for the bird and it flies out. I leave the door open and cook coffee after coffee, writing this diary, sunshine and blue skies outside. The bird comes flying through the chimney again and leaving through the door. I will leave it’s home in a minute.
*edit: i had a search through “birds of the pyrenees”, it was an alpine sparrow. I had seen these already on top of the tourmalet pass.
Just some more pics of the last days without all the blabla
Riding along this road on the side of the mountains in the catalonian alt pirineu, went for about 20km around 2000m altitude with a crazy downhill at the end
After the downhill must come the uphill, making my way to andorra
Andorra. Best viewed from above, that place fucking sucks, haha. Sorry andorrans.
Getting my ass quickly out of Andorra, rolling down back into Catalunya. I had changed my plan and wanted to go to Girona, but weather report makes me change it back, heading towards Perpignan again.
On top of the last climb of the pyrenees section yesterday evening. Going to roll down 40km to perpignan when i get up, maybe hit the coast. Need to make a plan for where to go next, got nothing yet.
Coll Palomeres
Camping Municipal in La Bastide just below the Coll costs 4€ (+ each 5 min of hot shower 1€), cheapest site i’ve been to.
I saw your cat pic yesterday and I just thought that your air mat may be damaged.
But from your refugio post today I think that it is fine ;-)
I was actually thinking it’s still early, i am on a campsite, i’ll be able to fix it, i need this cat in my tent right now :)
Guess i got lucky all around there.
That looks epic! I think it’s the right call with the river crossing- It rarely goes wrong, but when it does it can go wrong really badly.
We’re planning to cross the Pyrenees in a few months- heading from the Alps through to Rodellar. I was thinking of just catching a train for that section, but seeing your pics makes me wonder if we should put more effort into riding it!
Oh wow Rodellar looks also epic! I missed so much. There is also another desert, the bardenas reales bit west from huesca that looks real cool.
My plan was to head for the alps when i hit the mediterranean, but in the back of my head the thought of traversing the pyrenees in the other direction is building up :)
And yeah i think it was right with the river crossing. I mean it went well so wasn’t all wrong.
I think it’d be really worth it to try and find a nice route over the pyrenees, even if you’re no fan of too much climbing. The problem is probably that the easiest crossings have the biggest roads. The portalet would be an alright option, but maybe you can find some smaller roads over more days or something. I guess will be some memorable day(s).
I am about to pack my tent now and head over on the spanish side again. :)